The present invention relates to an improved small-sized switch with an indicator and, more particularly, to an improved small-sized rocker switch with an indicator, having a main contact adapted to be opened and closed by means of an actuator, wherein the indicate function is added merely by attaching a novel indicate member for indicating the state of the switch without requiring any modification of the inside of the switch body itself.
The switch with indicator of the kind described above is disclosed in, for example, the U.S. Pat. No. 3,928,743.
According to this prior art, it is possible to grasp and discriminate the on or off state of the switch quite clearly and distinctively because of a large size of the indicate window. This prior art, however, suffers a disadvantage that, since an actuator and a converter are tiltably attached to respective shafts disposed at an upper and lower parts of the switch housing and adapted cooperatively to tilt in opposite directions to each other with respect to the switch housing, it is necessary to mount two independent shafts vertically spaced from each other, resulting in a larger height of the switch as a whole. This goes quite contrary to the demand for reducing the size of the switch.
To overcome this problem, the U.S. Pat. No. 4,024,367 proposes a new switch. This switch, however, is not suitable for small-sized switch of the type described, because of its too complicated construction including a movable indicate member disposed beneath the actuator and adapted to be moved in the opposite direction to the direction of tilting of the actuator and converter which are coaxially connected to each other.